Wednesday, September 23, 2026
A love letter to lower case
I’ve said in the past that I find posts written all in lower case to be hard to read, and I stand by that. I need a few capital letters here and there to get my bearings.
But that doesn’t mean I don’t have an appreciation for lower case. In fact I downright prefer it.
Capital letters have a boring lack of variety. They’re all the same height and they’re all kind of blocky. Sure they should be used, but sparingly.
Lower case letters have so much more diversity: half height (like a, c or e), three-quarters height (like t), or full height (with an ascender like b or d). Or a descender that takes them below the line: g, j, p, q, y.
There’s a reason you never see an entire sentence written in all caps. It’s even harder to read than all lower case. Radio announcers write their copy in all caps for this very reason. It forces them slow down and enunciate.
Let’s check out some particularly appealing lower case letters. If you’re not using serifs, you should switch so you can see how beautiful letters can be.
Two of my favourites are the ones with a tittle: i and j. You won’t find any capital letters with dots over them — at least not in English.
Another favourite is g: I love the loop on the bottom and the stem poking out the top.
And look at this a: See how nicely it curves on the top and leaves a bowl underneath — all in the space of half a capital.
Then there are the ligatures. Two f’s join as ff. An f and an i become fi. This is artistry you won’t see among the upper case.
The only real competitor among the capitals is Q with its swooping tail.
But what about headings? Write them like you would a sentence, but without a period at the end — no capitals unless necessary. And that includes what is known as title case.
With title case, pretty much every word is capitalized with the exception of some shorter words. The trouble with writing a heading as if it were a title is that real titles get lost in them. Suppose you want to put the title of book in your heading. If all the words are capitalized, it’s hard to know where the book title begins and ends.
A great use of lower case is Apple’s naming of some of its products with lower case letters at the beginning. For example, I’m writing this on an iMac, which runs on macOS. Do not be one of those pedants who insist on writing “MacOS.” I have no idea what they are trying to prove.
More posts in the Writing category
